Here is a brilliant piece of ingenuity - and common sense. It’s a way to bypass the infamous Stad
peninsula, where the sea is so rough it scared the Vikings.

The Stad
peninsula, which juts out of the Northwestern part of Norway, has long
made sailors’ lives more difficult. Getting around it means wrangling with
choppy seas, weird currents, and the highest winds in the country. Even the
Vikings didn’t like to do it, often choosing to port their ships over land
instead.

Now, after centuries
of planning, Norway has committed to a solution: they’re going to carve a
ship-sized tunnel into the peninsula, Digital Journal reports.
After all, if you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, and you can’t go
around it, you’ve got to go through it.

“The Stad tunnel for
boats will finally be built,” Norwegian Transport Minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen
said in a statement. This plan, he continued, would ensure “a safer and more
reliable passage of the most dangerous and harsh waters for the transport of
goods along the Norwegian coasts.”

The tunnel will be about 100 feet wide and one
mile long, and will burrow through the narrowest part of the peninsula, between
Moldefjorden and Kjødepollen. In mock-ups from the
Norwegian Coastal Administration, it looks a lot like a car tunnel,
complete with eerie blue lights and the occasional emergency phone.

Norse engineers have
floated the idea of such a tunnel regularly since 1874. After a number of
cost-benefit analyses, the government officially signed on yesterday, as part
of the larger National Transport Plan. Construction is expected to begin in
2019—at which point being a Viking will be easier than ever.

The quirky Bell Inn has stood at the edge of Nottingham’s
vast Old Market Square since 1437. This reputedly haunted venue, boasting
quaint and cosy snugs and bars, hides a dark and eerie sub-pub underworld that stretches
deep into the gloom beneath the city.

Begun by
Carmelite friars who lived in this part of Nottingham in the 14th century, the
Bell Inn Caves are a little-known part of the city’s extensive human-made,
rock-cut netherworld. Originally excavated as monk’s dormitories as well as,
appropriately, for the brewing and storage of ale, the inn’s dark and
mysterious medieval maze has been added to and adapted over the centuries.

The
warren-like sandstone cave system boasts enigmatic caved-in tunnels, shafts,
and abandoned staircases clawing upward in vain toward the modern city streets
above. Exactly where some of these shafts and steps once surfaced is long
forgotten.

A prescient
pub landlady had one tunnel adapted in the early 20th century for the storage
of a vast reserve of liquor to ensure that the good people of Nottingham would
not suffer wartime shortages of gin and ale. The Bell Inn’s mysterious
underworld also features rare Norman and Elizabethan brickwork, salvaged tram
tracks, and a pair of putrid 53-foot-deep wells used by the medieval monks as a
source of water for their holy homebrew.

The spooky
labyrinth is accessed via a storeroom adjacent to the mens’ room, which itself
is in a cellar beneath the main bar. From here, rock cut steps descend to a
tier of sandstone grottoes used for storing beer barrels. From one of these
cluttered caverns, a wooden trap door leads deeper still to a cavernous void
with two exits. One exit leads to a series of rock cut steps and yet more caves
and chambers, and the other leads to a tunnel heading determinedly away from
the Bell Inn beneath neighboring buildings.

The only sign of
these ghostly grottoes evident from the alehouse above is a glass observation
window set into one of the bars, which lets people glimpse into deep shaft
plunging into the darkness of the caverns below. Guided tours of this perilous
and largely unlit cave system are carried out by torchlight at the visitor’s
own risk. Hard hats are not provided, so underground explorers are advised to mind
their heads!

"At your own risk" tours of the Bell
Caves are available at certain times of the year. Tours are only recommended
for fit and healthy individuals as a steep ladder descent is required to access
the deepest caves. Wear sensible flat shoes and warm clothing, as the caves are
a near-constant 50 Fahrenheit. Be aware your clothes may well get dirty and
sandy.

For the next
available entertaining and informative tour, it is best to inquire during quiet
times at the bar, or alternatively at the Nottingham tourist information
office, or the official Visit Nottinghamshire website.

Nottingham has
more human-made caves than any other city in Europe, although most of this
underworld is privately owned, dangerous, or permanently inaccessible.
Nottingham's earliest recorded Brythonic name, Tigguo Cobauc translates as
"Place of Cavy Dwellings."